Description
Book SynopsisA study of the representation of astrology and celestial portents in the medieval and later literature of Ireland and Wales, Fiery Shapes examines the mysterious figure of the druid, who was allegedly able to read the future from rainclouds; Taliesin and Merlin; and the Welsh gentleman poet of the later Middle Ages and beyond.
Trade Review...an important contribution to an under-studied, and often marginalised, area of literary-historical study. * Marginalia *
Recommended for all university libraries and gives students and scholars of medieval literature and the history of science a good survey of the prevailing views and controversies of the fields without firmly resolving many of them except in a provisional way. It is also a potential gold mine for writers of medieval fantasy, since there is so much material with enormous lacunae to be filled in imaginatively. * Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts *
this is a well-produced, well-written work not only of professional scholarship but of love, for which both Mr Kenyon and his publishers can be congratulated. * Gerald Morgan, Welsh History Review *
Mark Williams has given us a new, serious, and painstaking study * Andrew Breeze, Mediaevistik *
Table of ContentsLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ; ABBREVIATIONS ; PREFACE: LITERATURE, PORTENTS, AND ASTROLOGY ; 1. Celestial portents and apocalypticism in medieval Ireland ; 2. Druids, cloud-divination, and the portents of Antichrist ; 3. Taliesin and Geoffrey of Monmouth's astrological portents ; 4. Comets, portents, and astrology in late medieval Wales ; 5. Morgan Llwyd and the spiritualization of astrology ; AFTERWORD ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; GLOSSARY OF CELTIC AND ASTROLOGICAL TERMS ; GENERAL INDEX
